I’m helping the site: https://swingshoes.dk making a sign-up system for their members.
They have many workshops and social events, that they wish to create on Facebook, since there are many users in there.
But it’s a hassle to go to Facebook and click through the ‘Create event’-wizard every time, considering that those same information has just been inserted manually in another system. Plus also having to find a banner image and write a description that fits Facebook (with a link to the product), etc. etc.
Solution attempt 1: Using Facebooks events API
Facebook apparently closed their Events API in 2014 – and they’re very strict about using their API. Grrr!! Walled gardens!! Grrr!!
Solution attempt 2: Finding vendors with custom API-permissions
I understand that EventBrite has some further API-access, so one could try to go through them to do something automatically. But I can see that it doesn’t allow creation of events.
I’m also kind of glad that this didn’t work, since it would have added complexity to the solution.
Solution attempt 3: Other 3rd party solutions
I also considered Zapier and n8n, but apparently Facebook has disallowed this.
Solution attempt 4: Automated manual process
So since Facebook wants to be like this, I figured: “How can I make this manual process as absolutely nice for myself as possible”. So what I did was, that I added a bunch of Claude API-magic to WordPress and added that to a meta-box on the product page. This way, I have all the fields served right there in front of me, so I just have to click a button and copy-paste fields:
I also vibe-coded this script:
(async () => {
const sleep = ms => new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, ms));
const TARGET = 500;
const SKIP = [];
const PRIORITY_FIRST_NAMES = [
'Alan',
'Aleksandra',
'Øivind'
];
let totalClicked = 0;
let priorityClicked = 0;
let randomClicked = 0;
let skipped = 0;
let idlePasses = 0;
const scrollable = [...document.querySelectorAll('div')].find(d => {
const style = getComputedStyle(d);
return d.scrollHeight > d.clientHeight + 50
&& d.clientHeight > 200
&& (style.overflowY === 'auto' || style.overflowY === 'scroll');
});
if (!scrollable) {
console.log('Could not find scrollable container. Try scrolling manually.');
}
// Helper: get name from a checkbox element
const getName = (cb) => {
const nameEl = cb.querySelector('span[dir="auto"] h2 span');
return nameEl ? nameEl.textContent.trim() : '';
};
const getFirstName = (name) => name.split(' ')[0];
const shouldSkip = (name) => SKIP.some(s => name.toLowerCase() === s.toLowerCase());
const isPriority = (name) => PRIORITY_FIRST_NAMES.some(
p => getFirstName(name).toLowerCase() === p.toLowerCase()
);
// --- Phase 1: Scroll through everything, selecting priority names ---
console.log('--- Phase 1: Selecting priority first names ---');
idlePasses = 0;
while (idlePasses < 5) {
const unchecked = document.querySelectorAll('div[role="checkbox"][aria-checked="false"]');
let clickedThisRound = 0;
for (const cb of unchecked) {
const name = getName(cb);
if (shouldSkip(name)) { skipped++; continue; }
if (isPriority(name)) {
cb.click();
clickedThisRound++;
totalClicked++;
priorityClicked++;
if (clickedThisRound % 5 === 0) await sleep(100);
}
}
if (scrollable) scrollable.scrollTop = scrollable.scrollHeight;
idlePasses = clickedThisRound === 0 ? idlePasses + 1 : 0;
console.log(`Phase 1 — Priority selected: ${priorityClicked} | Skipped: ${skipped} (idle: ${idlePasses}/5)`);
await sleep(1000);
}
console.log(`Phase 1 done! Selected ${priorityClicked} priority names.`);
// --- Phase 2: Randomly select from remaining until TARGET ---
console.log(`--- Phase 2: Randomly selecting until ${TARGET} total ---`);
const remaining = totalClicked < TARGET ? TARGET - totalClicked : 0;
if (remaining > 0) {
// Gather all unchecked, non-skipped checkboxes
const allUnchecked = [...document.querySelectorAll('div[role="checkbox"][aria-checked="false"]')]
.filter(cb => !shouldSkip(getName(cb)));
console.log(`Found ${allUnchecked.length} remaining unchecked followers to pick from.`);
// Shuffle using Fisher-Yates
for (let i = allUnchecked.length - 1; i > 0; i--) {
const j = Math.floor(Math.random() * (i + 1));
[allUnchecked[i], allUnchecked[j]] = [allUnchecked[j], allUnchecked[i]];
}
for (const cb of allUnchecked) {
if (totalClicked >= TARGET) break;
cb.click();
totalClicked++;
randomClicked++;
if (randomClicked % 5 === 0) await sleep(100);
}
}
console.log(`Done! Total: ${totalClicked} (${priorityClicked} priority + ${randomClicked} random). Skipped: ${skipped}.`);
console.log('You can now manually review and send.');
})();… which one can copy/paste into the developer console, so it automatically marks people to invite, until TARGET is reached (500). This way, it’s possible to click an audience or a group and then within seconds invite them all to the event.
Here is the result: https://www.facebook.com/events/903885798693760/
It’s actually fairly okay. Now it takes less than a minute to do manually.
